Unsung Hero Profile – Mindi Webster
There are way too many professions that qualify as heroes to name them all. But every person in each of those professions has a story to tell. Being intensely curious, I want to hear them all, and I want to share them all. Therefore, one of the things that we are going to do is tell as many of them as we can. I have mad respect for these exceptional professionals, and ask you to honor them with me.
As our first unsung hero profile, it is only fitting that we start with a teacher as we are very passionate about what they do. That is why I am so excited to have recently had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite teaching professionals, Mindi Webster. I have been friends with Mindi for several years, and was immediately impressed by her passion for teaching. I think it takes a special kind of person with a passion for excellence and a caring spirit to make a difference in the lives of young people. Mindi exhibits those traits exceptionally well.
She was very transparent and passionate in her answers to my questions. I expected nothing less.
Mindi Webster
Q: How long have you been a teacher and/or worked in a school system?
A: I started my teaching career in 1987 at Courtland High School, but after relocating a year later, took a position as a corporate trainer. I returned to the public schools in 2001 to manage a grant from the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation for an elementary school in Spotsy. In 2005 I returned to the classroom as a middle school English teacher.
Q: What school do you work at and what do you do/teach?
A: I am teaching my tenth year at Walker-Grant Middle School. I’ve predominantly taught 8th grade Advanced, Regular, and Special Ed Inclusion, but I have also taught 7th grade Special Ed Inclusion. I currently am serving my third year as the English Department Chair.
Q: What was your inspiration to be a teacher?
A: For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a teacher. My sister and I would play school as young girls. I can so perfectly recall creating lessons for our “students” and then having to spend time completing the assignments for all of them so that we’d have things to grade. We always had mostly brilliant students, although we’d be sure to include one or two that needed extra help to give us something to do after classes. Oh the fun we had!
I was a passionate reader as a child. Growing up poor I didn’t have the opportunities to do much physical travel, but I toured the world through books, fell in love multiple times with fictitious heroes, and found many women who I wanted to model. My teachers all encouraged reading and I thought they were all brilliant (except my 5th grade teacher who I swore came straight out of The Wizard of Oz if you know what I mean!).
Mrs. Reid was my 2nd grade teacher and how I loved her. She was probably the kindest, gentlest person I’ve ever known and she treated each one of us as if we were her own. I wanted to be her, not just as a teacher, but as a person.
Q: What are the rewards of being a teacher as you see it?
A: I always tell my students that I pray none of my middle school teachers remember me as an 8th grader and therefore will give them the benefit of four more years! Each year I attend our high school’s graduation; it is one of my favorite annual events. I get to see the sprouts of the seeds I planted five years prior and how much my former students have grown. The biggest reward is in knowing that in some small (even minuscule) way I got to be a part of that process.
On a daily basis, it is the individual moments when I get to see that something I said or did impacts a student in some small way. Perhaps it was the brilliant delivery of a grammar concept that finally hit a nerve, or the side-handed pack of crackers that garners a brief smile and a whispered “thank you.” Or the confidence shared about a crush because according to the student “you won’t tell anyone!”
Q: What are some of the challenges?
A: I hold these three major challenges as the most serious:
Testing. State driven testing has sucked the life out of teaching. The opportunities for hands-on learning, personal exploration, and a safe place to fail have really been quite minimized. I am saddened when I hear of how the elementary years have become so tied to testing: learning how to take a test, test strategies, data, data, data etc. It is as if we’ve gagged exploring and investigating for spoon-feeding targeted facts and figures.
Technology: Another serious challenge we face is technology. It is the proverbial double-edged sword. I believe it is why our children don’t read like they used to which impacts their ability to write. They hold their gadgets as gods and spend more time on them than they do reading, kinesthetic playing, and building healthy social interactions. The other side to this dilemma is that schools tend to assume that every student has access to educational technology, i.e. a computer accessing the internet, and in fact that is not true.
Busy Parents: From my vantage point, I really see how parental time, or lack thereof, really impedes child development. Many children, and they cross all demographic lines, are simply missing their parents.
They crave more structure from those who love them; they want to talk about things beyond the daily grind, and they want to know more about their parents as people and not just how much their jobs stink, their bosses are dumb, and there isn’t enough money. From this challenge, we see children who are needy in ways a teacher can’t always fulfill.
All of these challenges collectively, however, yield a significant lack in a child’s depth of knowledge of the world around them and limited life experiences, which makes teaching incredibly difficult.
Q: For someone wanting to understand what it is like to live in your shoes, in your profession, how would you 
tell your story?
A: It is so difficult to try to convey the daily nuances of our work. Most people think, “Hey, I went to school, I know what it’s like.” But in reality, they don’t. In one period of my day alone, I feed kids (if they are hungry, they cannot learn), I deal with health issues that impact class time (you’d be astounded at the number of unwell children we have), I resolve personal disputes (girl drama in the middle school?), I noodle through language barriers (I do not know a single Farsi word), I field phone calls (parents who need to talk to their child – yup, it happens), I field data requests that my principal may need STAT (because sometimes administrators forget we teach during class), I have to print an assignment, give out pencils, provide an extra copy of a book before digging into a lesson (students arrive in class with NOTHING…), etc. all the while trying to motivate, inspire, convey respect, and oh, yes, teach.
Q: What defines you outside of school? Meaning, what is your passion… your purpose… what is important to you?
I am a fairly contented and joyful person. My passion is to share that and perhaps to even inspire that. I love being out of doors and see it all as a gift from God. I enjoy creating paper crafts which I create to spread happiness. I believe we have a responsibility to love one another and it is important to me to model that and create opportunities to impart that.
It is largely because of professionals like Mindi that we have such a passion for teachers and the schools at which they serve. Thank you Mindi for all that you do and for being so forthcoming in our interview.
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Recently I attended a party and had the opportunity to engage in conversation with a gentlemen I had just met. During the conversation, he asked what I do for a living. As I answered that I am a Realtor and am part of a real estate team, I saw an interesting look fleetingly cross his face. I thought to myself, this guy is not fond of my profession.
I was initially surprised at first that even Chris Rock won’t perform at a college. Then as I considered it, it wasn’t so surprising anymore. I believe colleges are fostering a sense of entitlement that bleeds over into two main areas of life. The first area I am speaking of is that colleges are creating an unrealistic sense responsibility for every cause on the planet, as highlighted by the Chris Rock story. It seems everything is unfair to somebody and it’s our fault.
